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TERMS OF USE | PRIVACY POLICY

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BLOG September 20, 2017

Flashback: Bernie Sanders Once Said Venezuela Embodied 'American Dream' More Than US

Remind me: What’s happening in Venezuela?

The oil-rich nation has been plunged into poverty and chaos. People are living from meal to meal, taking turns to dig through trash to try to find scraps of food and resorting to zoo animals, rats and dogs for meat. Children are starving to death at unprecedented rates.

Who thought this was a good idea?

On Monday, President Donald Trump said in an address to the U.N. that Venezuela’s problem “is not that socialism has been poorly implemented but that socialism has been faithfully implemented.”

Former Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez was praised as a revolutionary for instating sweeping socialist reforms. Nicolas Maduro took over after Chavez’s death in 2013, vowing to continue his policies of state control.

Economists say reckless government spending and state control are a big part of the problem, and the Venezuelan government is deeply in debt and dealing with the falling price of oil.

Progressive Hollywood celebrities and self-titled socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders have pointed to Venezuela as an example of socialism working. In 2011, Sanders said that “the American dream is more apt to be realized in South America, in places such as Ecuador, Venezuela and Argentina.”

Glenn’s take:

“Venezuela was supposed to be the crown jewel. It’s the progressive paradise,” Glenn reminded listeners on Wednesday’s “The Glenn Beck Radio Program.”

Sanders once praised countries with food lines, saying that rationing was a sign of equality and success.

“Ask a Venezuelan what it’s like to deal with food rationing … to get turned away and then have to go dig through the trash in a last-ditch effort to feed your family,” Glenn said.

This article provided courtesy of TheBlaze.

GLENN: Venezuela was supposed to be the crown jewel. It's the progressive paradise. Everyone in Hollywood praised Venezuela: Sean Penn, Oliver Stone, Naomi Campbell, Michael Moore, Bernie Sanders. All of them.

In fact, on Bernie Sanders own website, he claimed that if the American Dream would be more apt to be realized in Venezuela, then in the United States.

So why is it that everyone loves Venezuela? I think probably because it was a country that had so much promise. And then when they went and started to really fully embrace socialism entirely, none of us ever lived there.

What does the utopia actually look like? Inflation nears now -- sorry, 800 percent.

Basic goods like toilet paper are severely rationed. The nation with the largest oil reserves in the world has to implement -- import oil. And has oil and gasoline shortages.

What's really so heartbreaking, the people are struggling for food every single day. At night, many citizens go on the prowl to hunt for rats, cats, or dogs.

This is what progressives across the world call a paradise. Misery is the politics. Ask Bernie Sanders, the lack of food is, believe it or not, a sign of success.

BERNIE: You know, it's funny. Sometimes American journalists talk how bad a country is because people are lining up for food. That's a good thing. In other countries, people don't line up for food. The rich get the food, and the poor starve to death.

GLENN: Ask a Venezuelan what it's like to deal with food rationing, what is it like to stand in line for food. To get turned away and then have to go dig through the trash in a last-ditch effort to have to feed your family. Ask them what it's like to watch their leaders rip up the Constitution and seize even more power and more control. Power and control. Power and control.

In the end, I don't care if it's the Nazis or the communists, I don't care if it's the left or the right, there is another way.

Individual freedom. Power and control in the end, that is what the progressive, socialist, left and right agenda is always all about.

RADIO

Glenn Beck celebrates the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11

It was only 50 years ago, on July 20th, 1969, that Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong became the first humans to actually set foot on the lunar surface -- something that just ten years prior had been unthinkable. More than 600 million people around the world listened as Armstrong spoke these immortal words: "One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind." Watch the clip to hear Glenn tell the story and bring the historic day to life.